The banished prince is in a forest.
It’s night and cold: he lies beneath a tree.
Since he’d once acted wrong he feels embarrassed
until he falls asleep, and dreams that he
is back at home and reunited
with his father who’d expelled him, and
then wakes, by this dream much excited,
and hears a sound he cannot understand.
It is laughter, that’s so loud the trees
all tremble and the leaves do not stop shaking.
The ground is moving under him and he’s
afraid that he’ll be swallowed while it’s quaking.
He had been banished by an angry father,
and wonders if this could explain the puzzle
of what had just occurred, while feeling rather
regretful that he’s such a great schlimazel.
However, nothing happens to him after,
until a stranger in the dawning light
appears. He asks him: “Please explain the laughter.”
He answers: “That’s the day replacing night.”

The story on which this poem is based on a tale by Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, cited by Rabbi Norman Lamm in a 1973 essay on Tisha B’Av, in which he........

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